


Six Impossible Things

by imkerfuffled



Series: 25 Days of Ficlet Prompts [18]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Rating for brief language, Spoilers for Winter Soldier, Spoilers for aos s1 in ch6, What Happened in Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3883066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She entered Budapest as a fugitive Russian spy. She left as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.</p><p>(It's classified. She can neither confirm nor deny the involvement of one dead Nazi organization, another living Japanese one, and an encrypted flash drive.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a kinda sorta sequel to A Meeting, A Beginning, but again, you don't need to read that first.
> 
> I borrowed Yakuza from the comics. Basically, I needed an international crime ring for Nat to double-cross, and Daredevil just got attacked by these guys 100-to-1-style in the comics I've been reading, so I thought perfect, that's just what I need for Budapest. You don't really need to know anything about them.

He caught up to her on a roof in Budapest. Months of cat and mouse games, chasing each other halfway around the world and back —and there they both were. Hawkeye on one end of the roof, bowstring taut and aimed straight at her heart. Black Widow on the other end, revolver in hand and pointed straight at his head. The only noise that accompanied them were the distant sounds of the city below and the gentle howling of the wind, mingling with their own labored breathing from the chase. 

“Time’s up, Widow,” he said, shouting to be heard across the distance, “You can’t escape this time.” 

She laughed and shook the wind-whipped hair out of her eyes. “This isn’t a Bond movie, Hawkeye,” she laughed, “Witty one-liners won’t get you anywhere.” 

“What can I say? I like the classics.” 

Neither made a move against the other, each searching for the right opening. If he were any normal opponent, Natalia could shoot him and duck behind the tiny, stumpy smokestacks between them, but he would only anticipate her actions. 

The building was long, but relatively short. Conceivably, she could survive a leap off the edge if it came to that. 

“’Hawkeye,’ remember?” he tapped a finger to the side of his head, seeing her eyes dart toward the street below, “I’d pick you out on the ground. You’d be a sitting duck.” 

“It’s a very dumb man who tells his enemy his plans before executing them,” she shouted back. 

“Or one who knows he can’t lose.” 

“Say that to every movie villain in history.” 

He shrugged. “Good thing I’m the good guy then.” 

“We’re spies,” she said, “There’s no such thing as ‘good guys.’” 

The banter died down, faded back into the background of traffic noise and wind. They were stalling for time. 

“I should warn you,” she said eventually. It could have been his imagination, but her voice sounded… sad. Tired. “Whether or not you kill me, there will be people after you.” 

“Russian intelligence.” It wasn’t exactly a question. 

“Not just them. Yakuza,” she answered. 

He squinted at her. “That international crime ring you teamed up with last month?” he asked, remembering his investigation into her, “Why are they still interested in you?” 

“I stole something from them,” she said frankly. 

“Why’d you do that?” he asked, tightening his grip on his bow when she took one hand off her gun and flipped open a compartment on her other bracelet. 

Instead of answering him, or shooting him with one of her widow bites, she pulled a USB drive from the open compartment. “Relax,” she said, holding it up in front of her, “It’s not a bomb.” 

“And I’m supposed to believe that?” 

She smirked seeing the look in his eyes. Despite all his training, it said everything she needed to know: He was confused. Suspicious. Apprehensive that he was watching everything fall apart. 

“This holds encrypted files on North America Hydra operations,” she told him, “Beyond that, I don’t know anything about it, except that Yakuza wants it back. They stole it from a rogue Hydra agent a few months ago, and I stole it from Yakuza to use as leverage in case they tried to double-cross me on their mission. Then I never gave it back.” 

He opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and finally opened it again. “Why are you telling me this?” 

“Because I’m going to toss this at your feet, and then I’m going to leave,” she stated. 

“That’s not going to happen.” 

“It will,” she said, “Either you’ll waste your arrow shooting this in the air because you still think it’s a weapon, and I use that time to make my escape, or you pick up the flash drive, let me go, and tell your superiors that I got away after you wrested it from me.” 

She could see him working through it in his mind, weighing the likelihood that she was playing him. 

“Hydra’s dead. You’re lying,” he finally said, though there was a slight twinge of doubt in his voice, “There’s nothing on that drive.” 

“If I were lying, I’d have come up with a better story.” 

“You’re also trying to kill me, so why should I trust—” 

“Because I’m not helping you,” she interrupted him, “I’m helping myself. This thing —” she shook the USB slightly, and he tensed up, “—puts a target on my back. I get rid of it, and Yakuza will stop chasing me.” 

He didn’t respond. 

“It’s a good offer; you agree not to kill me today in exchange for valuable information about a resurgence of your organization’s old enemy,” she argued, “I can give you a few minutes to think it over, but much longer than that and I’m afraid we might have some unwanted visitors in the Yakuza catching up to me.” 

“Let’s say I believe you,” he said slowly, “What’s to keep me from shooting you as soon as you give it to me?” 

“Honor?” she grinned. 

“We’re spies,” he echoed her earlier words, “There’s no such thing.” 

“It’s a good thing you’re a good guy, then.”


	2. Hydra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, this was originally going to be a bunch of unrelated one-shots, but then I finished the first one, and I just had to follow up on it. So now this is a What Happened in Budapest fic.

“That’s impossible,” Coulson said, staring at the flash drive in Clint’s hand.

“Yep,” Clint tossed it in the air a couple times and caught it, “But she did put up a pretty nasty fight to keep it away from me.”

“Hydra’s been gone since World War Two,” Coulson reminded him, “There’s no way they can come back, let alone come back in America.”

“Well, there’re neo-Nazis in America,” Clint shrugged, “Why not neo-Hydra?”

Coulson narrowed his eyes at Clint. “Neo-Nazis are a handful of nut-jobs who don’t pose a threat to SHIELD. Not exactly what Romanova was implying about Hydra.”

“Look, I got the flash drive, okay?” Clint said, “It could easily turn out to be nothing, but I couldn’t take the chance that it’s not.”

Agent Coulson regarded him for a moment, silently, with that piercing stare that still made Clint feel like all his secrets were written on his forehead. He had known Clint for long enough to know what that particular defensive tone meant in his voice: Clint was hiding something. Coulson had also been an agent of SHIELD long enough to know when to let something drop.

“You did the right thing, Clint,” he told him. “We’ll get it to the tech team. Have them take a crack at the encryption.”

“Sure.”

* * *

 

Three days later, Agent Sitwell came back and informed them that SHIELD’s hackers had accessed the drive’s contents, and the only thing on it was a single text file containing the lyrics to The Itsy Bitsy Spider in Russian.

Clint didn’t yet know Natalia Romanova well enough to realize that she would never leave a calling card like that. If she had really tricked him, that flash drive would be completely empty, or more likely it would unleash a virus that wiped out SHIELD’s servers.

He might not have known her yet, but he couldn’t shake her words from the roof, mocking him for being dramatic, and he couldn’t help but think there was something wrong with this story.

It was many, many years before he realized just _how_ right he was.


	3. The Hideout

She never left Budapest. 

For weeks, SHIELD had searched for her after the confrontation on the roof, and she never left. 

Clint had to hand it to her; it was the very last place they would think to look. She had convinced them that she fled the country on three different commercial jets and two separate helicopters—all paid for with money that didn’t exist—and sent SHIELD off on a wild goose chase through the Australian outback. 

But it turns out, she never left Budapest. 

If he weren’t trying to kill her, Clint could see himself really liking this Black Widow.


	4. Budapest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol what happened in Budapest remains a mystery.
> 
> Also I know nothing about computers

[THIS FILE HAS BEEN REDACTED BY ORDER OF S.H.I.E.L.D.]

[LEVEL SIX ACCESS REQUIRED]

[REFER TO FILE: THREAT > ORGANIZED_CRIME > YAKUZA > SUBFILE: 093087560 CODENAME: BUDAPEST_INCIDENT]

[REFER TO FILE: THREAT > INTELLIGENCE_AGENCIES > RED_ROOM > BLACK_WIDOW > NATALIA_ROMANOVA > SUBFILE: 093087561 DEFECTION]

[REFER TO FILE: PERSONNEL > CLINT_BARTON > SUBFILE: 072587634 CODENAME: STRAY_PETS]

[REFER TO FILE: PERSONNEL > NATASHA_ROMANOFF > SUBFILE: 093087562 RECRUITMENT]


	5. Strike Team Delta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly fuck apush.
> 
> That's my excuse for why I nearly didn't get this posted on time.

_“Just so you know,” he shouts as he leaps up, fires five arrows into the chests of oncoming enemies, and ducks back behind the lump of fallen concrete they’re using as cover, “We are_ not _on the same side here!”_

_“Duly noted,” she says, mirroring his actions with her gun, “The American secret agent and the Russian spy are enemies. Got it.”_

_“I’ve got half a mind to hand you over to these guys right now,” he growls as he pulls another arrow from his quiver._

_“Yeah, you do that,” she snaps, firing again at their attackers, “See how you like it when they shoot you too.”_

_“I mean it, bitch,” he says, and she pretends not to be surprised by the slur, “If you so much as think about double-crossing me again, I’ll put an arrow in your eye.”_

_“What?”_

* * *

 

**Three Weeks Later**

 

[FILE: PERSONNEL > JAMES_RUSSELL > SUBFILE: 093087398] >

CLEARANCE: LEVEL 5

ASSIGNMENT: DECRYPTION SOFTWARE

LAST SEEN: THE HUB, 17-04-97 1800

CURRENT STATUS: UNKNOWN

 

[FILE: PERSONNEL > LUKE_ COOPER > SUBFILE: 093087398] >

CLEARANCE: LEVEL 5

ASSIGNMENT: DECRYPTION SOFTWARE

LAST SEEN: THE HUB, 03-05-97 1800

CURRENT STATUS: UNKNOWN

 

[FILE: PERSONNEL > JACK_WEST> SUBFILE: 093087398] >

CLEARANCE: LEVEL 5

ASSIGNMENT: DECRYPTION SOFTWARE

LAST SEEN: THE HUB, 03-05-97 1800

CURRENT STATUS: UNKNOWN

 

[UPDATE – FILE: PERSONNEL > JAMES_RUSSELL > SUBFILE: 093087398] >

CURRENT STATUS: DECEASED

ESTIMATED TIME OF DEATH: 17-04-97 1800 – 18-04-97 0700

* * *

 

“Let’s go over this one more time,” Clint said, prompting a long-suffering sigh from Agent Coulson. This may have only been Natasha’s first interaction with the two of them together, but she got the impression that happened a lot.

The three of them stood around the table in a briefing room with Agent Victoria Hand at its head, looking considerably less patient than Coulson. On the table were the three personnel files and Natasha’s stolen USB, and a projector on one wall showed photographs of James Russell’s body.

“So these guys decrypted Widow’s super-secret Hydra file,” Clint reiterated. He stood facing the screen with one arm crossed and the other tapping his lips. “Now, they say she was screwing with us. She says she wasn’t. The day after they get the flash drive, this dude—” he pointed at the crime scene photos, “—goes missing.”

“Get to the point, Barton,” Agent Hand snapped.

“Fast-forward to two weeks ago. I send word that I’ve made Romanoff, the one person who knows without a doubt if the drive was a trick—and according to her twelve dozen polygraph tests, it wasn’t—”

“We both know polygraphs can be rigged,” Hand interrupted.

“They find out I’ve made the Black Widow an agent—”

“She’s not an agent.”

“—of SHIELD,” Clint barreled on, raising his voice. Natasha glared daggers at Agent Hand from her position near the wall. “And they instantly drop off the grid too, two days before their bro’s body is found. Now, are you asking what _I_ think happened? Because I’d be happy to say what _I_ think—”

“We already know what happened —”

“ _I_ think you’ve got a Hydra problem on your hands, and this proves that Romanoff was doing us a solid by giving me that drive, but you don’t want to admit that.”

Agent Hand glared at Clint, and Coulson sighed again.

“But you’re not asking me that, are you?” Clint continued, “You just want to know if I can track them down now that we’re out of Budapest, and the answer to that is: abso-futzing-lutely.”

Agent Hand’s long-suffering sigh was sharper and more annoyed than Coulson’s.

“Just one condition, though,” said Clint.

“And what is that?” Hand asked grudgingly.

“Natasha comes with me.”


	6. Aftermath

In the official file, Luke Cooper and Jack West were found almost two weeks later on May 30 at 0500 hours.

In the official file, Hawkeye and Black Widow brought them in, and Agent John Garrett led their interrogation.

In the official file, both Cooper and West committed suicide before they could give away anything about Hydra.

In the official file, Alexander Pierce was in charge of the internal investigation into SHIELD. In the official file, his team found five other agents undercover for Hydra.

And in the official file, it was an isolated incident. The “neo-Hydra” was simply seven unstable people who thought they could overthrow the system from the inside. After months of investigating, it was determined that Natasha’s file that she stole from Yakuza held nothing more than proof that those seven people were trying to rebuild Hydra.

 

 

The official file said nothing about Agent Garrett threatening Cooper and West’s families to keep their mouths shut.

It said nothing about him murdering them and making it look like they’d killed themselves in their cell.

It said nothing about Alexander Pierce’s team being made up entirely of Hydra.

It said nothing about the loyal SHIELD agents who questioned the ruling on the case, and ended up dead in their next missions.

It said nothing about the massive cover-up happening right underneath SHIELD’s nose.

* * *

 

**Now**

When Clint opened the door to the door to his apartment thirty-seven hours after the SHIELD files were dumped on the internet, he knew exactly who he would see on the other side. And when, two days later, he found her sitting on the couch staring at a stack of papers in her hands, he knew exactly which file that was.

“I can’t believe I just let it go,” she whispered. Her eyes held weight that Clint knew all too well. “Hey, it’s not your fault,” Clint whispered. He shut the front door behind him, dropped his grocery bags on the ground, and sunk himself onto the couch next to Natasha.

“But I _knew_ there had to be more to it than just this,” she slapped the back of her hand against the papers, “And I didn’t do anything about it.”

“There’s not much you could’ve done, back then,” Clint reasoned, “It’s not like SHIELD would’ve listened to you. Me and Coulson, on the other hand…” he sighed and looped an arm around Natasha’s shoulders.

“We should have said something.”

“We shouldn’t have trusted Pierce,” Clint said, “Guess we had too much other shit to deal with to look too closely.” He didn’t say that the ‘other shit’ was determining how much they could trust Natasha, and convincing SHIELD that they could trust her in the first place. Natasha didn’t mention it either.

“That doesn’t excuse any mistakes,” she muttered.

“Yeah.”

For a long time, they sat in silence, simply reading through the file that Natasha had printed out, wallowing in old memories.

“It’s kind of ironic,” she said at last, with a bitter laugh, “that my first mission for SHIELD was the same as my last.”

“I hate irony.”


End file.
